FRANKFURT,
Germany (AP)
--Bavarian officials
said Wednesday they're looking into
possible legal steps to stop U.S. Internet
companies from selling Hitler's
"Mein Kampf," which is banned along with
other Nazi propaganda in Germany.

In an interview on Hesse state radio in
Frankfurt, Bavarian finance ministry
spokesman Horst Wolff said the
western allies gave Bavaria, a southeast
German state, all rights to "Mein Kampf"
after World War II. He said Bavaria
intends to protect those rights. Germany's
foreign ministry has been asked to check
what legal action Bavaria could take
against U.S. booksellers that offer the
book in Germany, Wolff said.

Wolff's comments came as German
officials are searching for ways to stop
Germans from buying Nazi propaganda from
foreign Internet sites. Under German law,
books espousing Nazi philosophy are banned
from public display or sale. Violations
are punishable by up to five years in
prison.

GERMAN media giant Bertelsmann said on
Tuesday it would advise its online
bookselling partner Barnesandnoble.com to
stop selling Adolf Hitler's "Mein
Kampf" and other hate literature banned in
Germany.The company was reacting to a
complaint sent by the Los Angeles-based
Simon Wiesenthal Center to the German
Justice Ministry accusing barnesandnoble.com
and rival amazon.com
of violating German law by selling such
books to German consumers online.

"Bertelsmann
will suggest that Barnesandnoble.com's
management create a list of books that
will no longer be sold in Germany,"
Bertelsmann Chief Executive Thomas
Middelhoff told Reuters in a
telephone interview. "My impression is
that the Barnesandnoble.com management
is willing to cooperate with us on
this," he said.

Middelhoff added that Bertelsmann might
use a list of hate literature from the
Wiesenthal Center as a basis for what
books it would suggest banning from its
German selection.Bertelsmann and U.S. book
store chain Barnes & Noble each own 40
percent of the Barnesandnoble.com with the
remaining 20 percent on the New York Stock
Exchange.

Amazon.com was not immediately
available for comment.

Middelhoff added that it aimed to block
the distribution of "Mein Kampf" and other
hate literature to Germany immediately.
But he noted that because
Barnesandnoble.com was an independent
company, its management had the right to
determine a policy.

The Wiesenthal Center had said on
Monday that its Internet researchers in
Germany had ordered and received copies of
"Mein Kampf"
and "The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion," a
fraudulent early 20th century document
that claimed an international Jewish
conspiracy, from the two Internet
companies.

The German Justice Ministry said that
it was reviewing the accusations against
the two retailers and noted that companies
can be held legally responsible for
distributing hate literature in Germany
even if they are based in the United
States.

"The law in
Germany is clear," a ministry spokesman
said. "Offering material that incites
racial hatred with the intention of
distributing it in Germany is
illegal."

He added that he was not aware of any
official investigation of Amazon.com or
Barnesandnoble.com by German
prosecutors.

Owning books with anti-Semitic or
racist content is not necessarily illegal
in Germany. But those found guilty of
distributing hate literature or possessing
such material with intent to distribute
can be sentenced to up to three years in
prison and fined.

Middelhoff said that such cases
illustrated the new legal minefield
created by the Internet. "There are
cultural differences at work here. This is
a clear case illustrating the global
nature of the Internet, as a mass medium
that doesn't recognize any boundaries,"
Middelhoff said. "We need to find a way of
dealing with this phenomenon."

He added that
executives from the telecommunications and
media industries planned to present
proposals for Internet regulation to
government officials and trade body
representatives at a Global Business
Dialogue summit in Paris in
September.

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above news item is reproduced without
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typographical

Our
opinion

GERMAN
governments have always had an uneasy
relationship this century with the
freedoms of speech and study. It seems
ironic that it has taken a book by
Adolf Hitler to demonstrate this
unpalatable fact once again.

The
above news item is reproduced without editing other
than typographical